Mari Holden

Mari Holden
	Holden in 2000
Personal information
Full name	Mari Kim Holden
Born	March 30, 1971 (age 53); Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Team information
Current team	Virginia's Blue Ridge–TWENTY24
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider (retired); Directeur sportif;
Rider type	Time trialist
Amateur teams
1994–1996	Timex
1997	Euregio Egrensis
1998	Greenery–Hawk
1998	Saeco–Timex
Professional teams
1999	Acca Due O–Lorena Camicie
2000	Timex
2001	Alfa Lum
2002	Cannondale USA
2003–2006	Team T-Mobile
Managerial team
2014–	Twenty16
Medal record
Representing United States
Women's Road bicycle racing
Olympic Games
World Championships

Mari Kim Holden (born March 30, 1971) is an American Olympic medalist and World Champion in the sport of cycling. She won a silver medal in the 2000 Olympic Games time trial in Sydney, Australia and the world time trial championship later that year. She also won six U.S. championships, becoming the first American woman to win three consecutive U.S. time trial championships (1998–2000) and scoring a double by winning the U.S. time trial and road championships in 1999. In 2016 she was inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame as a Modern Road and Track Competitor^[1] and presently works as a community director at USA Cycling.

Career

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Holden was a two-time member of the U.S. junior world triathlon team, and was named junior triathlete of the year in 1991 by the Triathlon Federation USA. That year she finished seventh in the junior triathlon world championship.

She began cycling with a club in high school as part of a fitness program centered on triathlon, and did not make competitive cycling her focus until 1992 when she moved to Colorado Springs and began training with the U.S. cycling team to improve her triathlon. She also transferred to University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where she majored in philosophy.

After finishing sixth in the national time trial championship in 1993, Holden sat out much of 1994 with a compression fracture in her back.^[2] She came back the following two years, winning the time trial championship in 1995 and 1996.

The 1996 event was part of the trial to select members of the Olympic team. Selection was on overall performance in time trials and road races, and although Holden won both time trials, she did not fare so well in the road race and failed to qualify.

Holden raced in Europe. In 1999, she finished second in the Women's Challenge against an international field and in the top 10 in the Grande Boucle.

The following year, she won a silver medal at the Olympics, followed by a victory two weeks later in the world time trial championship in Plouay, France.

That year (2000), Holden was elected to the board of directors of USA Cycling and re-elected in 2004. She formerly served on the athletic advisory committee to the U.S. Olympic Committee and was athlete ambassador to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Holden coaches and holds cycling clinics and cycling camps as well as serves as a consultant on women's cycling issues and products. She was called one of the "greatest ambassadors in the sport of cycling" by Ride Magazine (March, 2008).

She joined the staff of USA Cycling in 2019 and is a community director, leading Let's Ride, a nationwide youth cycling program.^[3]